Maine Energy Commission Releases Divided Report

After meeting throughout the fall, Maine's Commission to Study Energy Infrastructure has failed to reach agreement on a process for leasing or use of any state-owned or state-leased land as an energy infrastructure corridor, voting 7-5-1 in December to approve a "three-way report" to the legislature including Majority and two Minority reports.  The major split appears to be tied to efforts to extend a moratorium on new oil and gas pipelines in Maine as leverage in negotiations with the Canadian government regarding proposed LNG terminals near Calais.  The Maine Legislature will take up the Commission's recommendations for proposed legislation in 2010.

Whatever the eventual outcome, the Commission's deliberations have also produced a great deal of information about regional energy developments, including renewable energy.  For example, this overview of proposed energy infrastructure projects provides a list of planned transmission lines that would bring energy--wind from northern Maine or the Maritimes, or nuclear from Point LePreau in New Brunswick--into the comparatively richer markets of southern New England:

• Green Line - 140 mile undersea 660 MW HVDC line linking Wiscasset, Maine to Boston, MA.
• Maine Express - 150 mile, 1000 MW HVDC line linking Wiscasset, Maine to Boston, MA.
• Northeast Energy Link - 1100 MW underground HVDC line between Orrington, Maine and Boston, MA, along the I-95/I-295 corridor.
  

Three other proposed projects, the Maine Power Connection, the Northeast Energy Corridor, and the Loring Transmission project, would interconnect with and extend Maine's existing transmission backbone.  The primary competitor to these projects outside of Maine is a 1200-1400 MW line proposed by Northeast Utilities, NSTAR and Hydro-Quebec that will carry hydro from Quebec to Massachusetts and Connecticut via New Hampshire.   

The favored technology for the long distance lines is HVDC, which is less expensive and has lower losses than equivalent high voltage AC (and is essential for any interconnection between Quebec and the US, whose systems are asynchronous).  These lines are power conduits, and will only interconnect with the grid at their endpoints, providing no real electical benefit to the communities through which they pass.  In some cases, power will only flow one way (e.g., north to south).  Siting these lines in a highway corridor or underwater is an attempt to avoid the obvious difficulty: while some people think wind turbines are pretty, most people aren't fans of transmission lines. They're an even harder sell when the benefits accrue in another town, another state, or even another country.